| The notion of hedges was first presented by G. Lakoff in1972. He pointed outhedges were those words which make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. Since then more andmore scholars have began to study hedges and have made many achievements. As akind of news report, accuracy, objectivity and conciseness are the features of Englishbroadcasting news. It seems that hedges can not exist in English broadcasting news. Inorder to prove hedges abound in English broadcasting news, analyze the reasons forthat and analyze the pragmatic functions of hedges in English broadcasting news，theauthor establishes a corpus and uses Adaptation Theory as the theoretical foundation toanalyze hedges in English broadcasting news from pragmatic perspective.Since BBC and VOA are the representatives of English broadcasting news, thisthesis chooses BBC and VOA news from October1,2011to June12,2012as corporasources to build a small corpus which includes two sub-corpora (the corpus of BBCand the corpus of VOA). On the basis of the classification of hedges which was putforward by E. F. Prince, this thesis employs Antconc software to collect data. Thewhole thesis tries to answer the following questions:(1) Do hedges exist in Englishbroadcasting news and if they do, what is the overall frequency and distribution ofhedges in English broadcasting news?(2) What are the reasons for the existence ofhedges in English broadcasting news?(3) What are the pragmatic functions of hedgesin English broadcasting news?After the analysis the findings can be concluded as：（1）Hedges do abound inEnglish broadcasting news.(2) The reasons why the reporters use hedges in Englishbroadcasting news are that hedges can adapt to physical world, mental world andsocial world.(3) The pragmatic functions of hedges in English broadcasting news are:seeking accuracy, avoiding absoluteness, protecting reporters and the providers of thenews and predicting the trend of the news euphemistically.This thesis has not only theoretical significance but also practical significance. The study can help the broadcasting news reporters to use hedges in a better way andhelp the Chinese listeners to understand the English broadcasting news moreaccurately. |
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